We need to drive these evil sodomites back into the closet and restore morality in the public square. I would like to see some of the more publicly flamboyant sodomites made an example of and charged with felonies. That will be the only way to take this country back.

We need to drive these evil sodomites back into the closet and restore morality in the public square. I would like to see some of the more publicly flamboyant sodomites made an example of and charged with felonies. That will be the only way to take this country back.

Take a laxative. Wait an hour or two. Then, maybe you can take a shit and feel better.

Bigotry...alive and well in Wisconsin.

Embarrassing.

No issue gets the pea-brained assholes preening their haloes quite like this one.

Idiot sanctimony has no shame.

Next up: some sanctimonious idiot jabbering about Jim Crow.

This issue is the dumbest pile of shit I've witnessed in my 60 years on this earth.

Jeremy: I think you can probably answer a question that has been on my mind.

If "marriage" was permitted between gays but heterosexuals then decided upon another form of union with a different name but made it strictly for heteros would you care? Homosexuals would not be allowed to enter into X which had no legal standing at all. Problem?

AIDS didn't originate with gays, dumbfuck...anybody who's ever taken the time actually read and research it would know that by now.

It was and indeed still is spread through specific sexual contact, but it's also spread through blood transfusions, needles, hemophilia treatments, donor insemination, mother to child transmission and other means.

Oh, and by the way; if Ronald Reagan hadn't been as homophobic as you and others here...the spread in SF would have been cut short much sooner than it eventually was.

You know, Jeremy, it's long past time that morons like you get punched out.

The traditional Christian proscription against homosexuality was and is based on a sane understanding of the health risk that gay men pose, along with the needs of a poor community to encourage procreation.

Gay men caused the AIDS epidemic. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with it. Yes, you've seen "And the Band Played On." A despicable piece of propaganda.

You are a slimeball, Jeremy. A real, low-life slimeball.

Do you talk like this in public? I hope you get clocked for it. You've got it coming.

The state allows itself to regulate marriage. In doing so, it confers upon marriage a value that is not trivial. And a value that has nothing to do with love.

Marrying someone of the same gender is not the same as marrying someone of the opposite gender, for the simple reason that in traditional marriage their is the expectation of or at least the possibility of procreation, and childrearing.

Statistically I would wager that you would find that a much larger percentage of straights getting married expect to/intend to have and raise children, and do so.

Sully for instance has to gone to great lengths to justify gay marriage by showing the flaws in straight marriage. Jonah Goldberg once justified gay marriage in men as "taming the wild gay". In neither case is the goal of the parties - generally - coincide with that of straight marriage. It is statistically an aberration.

Civil unions to protect partner's rights - sure. Those make sense. Devaluing the institution of marriage to make you feel normal - no. Sorry.

Marrying someone of the same gender is not the same as marrying someone of the opposite gender, for the simple reason that in traditional marriage their is the expectation of or at least the possibility of procreation, and childrearing.

That's weak. There's no intent-to-bear-children test when getting married. Old people can get married, as can infertile people. Moreover, more and more people are procreating outside of marriage, so this notion that marriage and procreation are intimately linked is false. Neither causation nor correlation move in either direction.

Civil unions to protect partner's rights - sure. Those make sense. Devaluing the institution of marriage to make you feel normal - no. Sorry.

How exactly does homosexual marriage devalue the institution? It's not as if we heteros are really paying it much honor.

Frankly, the anti gay-marriage arguments have gotten really tiresome. It comes down to this: the gov't regulates civil marriage, but it's not bound by any particular religious traditions or taboos. So should it discriminate against homosexuals simply because a certain religious segment of our population believes that marriage is a purely religious sacrament? I say no. As a policy matter, there's no justifiable reason not to let them get married. What valid government interest is there in preventing them?

Tidy Righty said..."We as individuals need to also do our part. I don't tolerate people being openly homosexual around me. If they try I get in their face and tell them they should not be promoting their evil ways."

You're either merely yanking people's chains or just another knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who has deep issues.

I realize this is an open forum, but isn't a tad disconcerting (especially to many of the regulars, regardless of their conservative political views), to see so many thoroughly bigoted people posting comments on a law professor's blog site?

Some valid responses, but missing the point. The state decides what is of value - all we're doing is conjecturing what was historically the rationale for the state's involvement.

You change the state's mind about it then you can institute changes. In this case, more people believe that gay marriage is a non starter, the courts agree that the people and the state have the right to make that decision, and bang. Here you are.

shoutingthomas - Why would someone who posts such nice and loving things about their wife, spew forth with such idiotic and thoroughly bigoted hate speech about gays?

And I find it rather strange to run into someone who fancies themselves a musician, and their wife an artist...to denigrate a group of people who are such a big part of the world in which your lives were intertwined.

Anti-miscegenation laws were repugnant because they fundamentally altered the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Race shouldn't enter into it.

What? I can't make sense of this.

Proponents of anti-miscegenation laws and gay marriage advocates are essentially guilty of the same thing: using marriage to politically bludgeon opponents into submission.

I also can't make sense of this. How are the goals of those who would prohibit marriage between people of different races remotely similar to the goals of those who think that two people of the same sex *should* be able to marry? You seem to be suggesting some occult motive that I cannot fathom.

sure holmes. Tidy Righty's comments and the Research2000 poll both fit so well with the conservative bogey men that exist in yours and kos's brainpans that you didn't recognize the obvious hoax. But at least you did start to figure it out, eventually.

If marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, period, then any other consideration that further complicates or alters it is destructive to the institution. Prohibiting men and women of different races from marrying altered the definition and institution of marriage and therefore, at its core, was culturally subversive in the same way thtat altering the definition of marriage to allow those of the same sex to marry would be.

You may not agree, but if you're telling me you can't see any logic to the argument, it's quite simply because you don't want to.

Yeah, if the same sex marriage were thinking tactically, they'd simply appropriate the symbols and ceremonies of marriage and identify themselves as such until the government was forced to crack down.

I'll also say again: Drawing the line at gay marriage stinks of populism and electioneering (more shame for those that fall for it). The real rubicon(sp?) was passed a long time ago when gay people started openly setting up households together. That actually was/is a real social innovation. If shoutingthomas and his ilk are real and not just trolls that's what they need to work against.

Jeremy, I don't object to gay marriage. But if we do get it, I will object to single people being treated differently in compensation benefits from married people.

The current justification for treating singles differently is that the marrieds are generally raising the next generation of society. If/when gay mariage comes, that justification will be weakened. Why should my benefit package be smaller just because I'm not married? Why the bigotry toward singles?

I had a friend in the early 80s at the beginning of the HIV epidemic. My friend was an actuary at a major life insurance company and he was afraid, very afraid. Based on his firm's calculations at the time it was only a matter of a few years before HIV was a plague-like disease affecting every part of society. This was in the early days when it was believed that HIV was easily transmitted between humans regardless of sexual orientation. His numbers, mercifully, were proven to be wrong as HIV is actually quite hard to get if you do not share needles and do not engage in anal intercourse with infected individuals. The facts on this topic speak for themselves.

Now - here is the continual question that I ask about this: how is marriage of any value if it's freely available with no limits?

We've made divorce easy. We turn our heads when people have affairs (not my issue - who can judge?). We make single parenthood easier and less stigma ridden.

Now we make it so that people of the same gender can marry on an equal footing as straights. Actually, we don't even mandate they be gay. But we'll allow them to marry.

This is the problem. You take child bearing and rearing out of the equation. You make merely a function of love and commitment. Now, where's the state's role? where does the state have a stake in regulating marriage?

Where is, for that matter, the value of marriage to society? The answer is none. It becomes a lifestyle choice. Not an institution. Not a cultural commitment. It's devalued.

Which is where it's headed. This is just another step down that road. If you remove the legal structure around a cultural instituion like marriage, then you're going to have to have some sort of value system like religion to mandate your behavior. If you remove the societal value of marriage as we are doing, then you're left with people maybe staying together, maybe not.

Maybe you're reducing the pool of people who will get married and raise children to exceedingly traditional religious people. Then, you have to deal with shifts in demographics as those people start to become dominant.

Yeah, if the same sex marriage were thinking tactically, they'd simply appropriate the symbols and ceremonies of marriage and identify themselves as such until the government was forced to crack down.

I think you are missing something vital here. Gay marriage is not illegal. It's perfectly legal. There's no law against gay people exchanging vows and living together. There's nothing to crack down with. States simply choose not to endorse gay marriage and give a preset set of rights and obligation to married gays.

Your argument does work for polygamists, though. Why they don't just exchange vows privately and live together, I don't know. I'm sure there's more to the story, since polygamy is actually outlaws, unlike gay marriage.

You are forgetting about Tom Wolfe's Great Relearning. My generation saw firsthand the awfulness of divorce as it affects children. As a result, you see less of it now than you did before, at least when there are kids involved.

If marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, period, then any other consideration that further complicates or alters it is destructive to the institution.

WHO defines that? I keep reading that marriage is defined... but where and by whom?

Prohibiting men and women of different races from marrying altered the definition and institution of marriage and therefore, at its core, was culturally subversive in the same way thtat altering the definition of marriage to allow those of the same sex to marry would be.

What are you talking about? You say this shit as if it were rooted in fact and history. Anti-miscegenation laws themselves defined valid marriage in the context of the time and place. You speak of "marriage is defined as," but your definition just arbitrarily picks "man and woman" and ignores any other existing definitions. To a person living at the turn of the 19th century, a black person and white person marrying would have been as definition busting as two men marrying are to you. "Oh, well, it violates the traditional definition of marriage, which must be between people of the same race, because it's about procreation, you see, and you can't let an inferior and superior race intermingle."

Rocket -- I understood your post to mean the opposite: that dispensing with laws against miscegenation somehow altered marriage fundamentally.

Sorry if I was less than clear - no, I was speaking about proponents of anti-miscegenation laws. Those that supported such laws were intentionally subverting the institution of marriage, for political ends. In that way, they are like proponents of gay marriage.

Those who think that you can be opposed to sodomite marriage while still tolerating public homosexuality are fooling yourselves by drawing invisible lines. Please read Robert Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah".

Those who are promoting this sick perversion on our country are not interested in protecting sodomites. Instead, they want to destroy our country.

Defenders of anti-miscegenation laws portrayed themselves as defending traditional marriage, which in their understanding had always been between one man and one woman of the same race.

They even had a point (of a kind) since all kinds of factors usually prevented people of different races from marrying.

My favorite stupid argument they used was an appeal to natural law. Since God made the different races in different parts of the world he obviously wanted them to stay separate and who were these race mixers to challenge God's works?

Those who are promoting this sick perversion on our country are not interested in protecting sodomites.

There are plenty of straight sodomites, dude. Trust me.

Further, the story of Sodom is not a story of ass-fucking at all. It's a story about failure to follow proper protocol when new people arrive in your village. This is easy to see if you actually read Genesis.

That said, I do think states need to get serious about laws against bareback fucking. It's a terrible cause of disease.

Thanks for the explanation. What threw me was the notion that it was the abstract interference with the "definition of marriage" that you find repugnant. Anti-miscegentation laws violate fundamental notions of equality and fairness, and the consequences and suffering they would cause are what I find repugnant. The same consequences exist for gay people who would marry and cannot.

We have had this discussion about the rights marriage entails (and the many, many obligations) ad infinitum in these threads. They are either totally trivial or easily afforded by signing a few contracts.

Gays would be much, much better served by trying to change the law to allow them to have those rights more easily under a rubric that is not called marriage.

Attempts to foist gay marriage on an unwilling populace will continue to fail.

1. Anti-miscegenation laws actively prohibited people of different ethnicities from exchanging vows and living together. There is no law that prohibits gays from doing these things.

"You can marry anyone you like as long as he or she is of the opposite sex."

"You can marry anyone you like as long as he or she is the same race."

We're talking about gov't sanctioned civil marriage, and as long as gov'ts don't recognize gay marriage, it's no different (in my book) than gov'ts refusing to recognize mixed race marriages.

2. Anti-miscegenation laws are clearly prohibited under the federal Constitution. Laws that say the state doesn't endorse gay marriage are clearly not.

You are absolutely correct here. There is nothing in the Constitution that makes a sexual orientation a protected status as is race. My opinions arise from notions of fairness and equality, not from the Constitution. We shouldn't refrain from doing what's right just because there's no law that compels us.

We're talking about gov't sanctioned civil marriage, and as long as gov'ts don't recognize gay marriage, it's no different (in my book) than gov'ts refusing to recognize mixed race marriages.

There's a huge, gaping difference. Failure to endorse a practice is vastly different than making it illegal and arresting people who do it. No one is preventing gays from marrying. Gay marriage is not illegal.

Please show me the gay person in America who has gotten married and been arrested.

rocketeer67: "I do find it interesting that you think anti-miscegenationists had a point, even "kind of.""

The point, morally abhorrent as it is to us today, was that there was no tradition in the US (or much of anywhere else) of people marrying outside their race. Interracial sex, yeah, but they didn't talk about that.Anyway, they claimed to be defending marriage as they had always known it. And from the point of view of their time, yeah, they were right.From our enlightened perspective they were wrong. Well-meaning, in a horribly misguided way, but wrong.

Just hope that in the future someone tries to be as understanding about your current views.

Those who are promoting this sick perversion on our country are not interested in protecting sodomites. Instead, they want to destroy our country.

Dude, piss off. I'm a conservative and I love this country just as much as the next American. The only thing is that I'm not scared of gay boogeymen coming to ass rape me. Seriously, learn to be a man and get off the "I'm so scared of sodomite perversion" wagon.

The Wisconsin amendment would seem to preclude this because it specifically outlaws marriage-like alternatives.

Here, you can't get your head around separating the naming of something called marriage and contracting for some right marriage entails. Marriage as the state sees it is merely a predefined set of rights that you opt into when you get married. It's very similar to the law about what happens when you die. There are laws stating where your property will go. But you can make them not apply to you with a simple contract called a will.

Similarly, most predefined marriage rights (and obligations) can easily be contracted for. I would be surprised if no gay rights attorney hasn't already set up a contract that does this.

"WHO defines that? I keep reading that marriage is defined... but where and by whom?"

It was God.

"The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him'...and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man.' For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."

Seven Machos said..."Madison -- It's a terrible public health hazard. You can't smoke in bars in Chicago but you can take a stranger home and fuck him or her in the ass? Without health insurance? That seems very wrong to me."

And...if you're both smoking at the same time...your rates can really skyrocket.

Jeremy: Then why do gays get HIV at a rate of hundreds of times more than heteros?

But you never answered my question: if gays can marry but straights dream up a new concept that has no governmental benefits attached but the new concept which is called something different from ""marriage" prohibits gays from participating would you be ok with that?

1) How are their rights being abrogated? In other words - where is it mandated that marriage itself is a right? Miscegenation laws clearly violate blacks rights to a traditional marriage based on their race. What basic rights are denied to gays? They can still marry people of the other gender.

What threw me was the notion that it was the abstract interference with the "definition of marriage" that you find repugnant.

Well, I do find it repugnant, but let me elaborate more if you don't mind. Anti-miscegenation laws weren't abstract, they represented a concrete interference in the definition of marriage. And it was that concrete interference that created the violation of fundamental notions of equality and fairness - I mean, that violation had to spring from somewhere, right?

Rocket -- You are making this too hard. The Constitution mandates that people be treated equally concerning race. Anti-miscegenation laws do not treat people of different races equally because they make a distinction about race. Therefore, anti-miscegenation laws are not constitutional.

Siete Male Animals said: "Anti-miscegenation laws do not treat people of different races equally because they make a distinction about race. Therefore, anti-miscegenation laws are not constitutional."

Well those in favor of the laws said the distinction didn't cause inequality as the same race restrictions applied equally across races. Blacks were free to marry anyone of the same race and Whites were free to marry anyone of the same race etc etc etc

(Again, I do not support such laws, which were an abomination, but I do recognize that in the place and time they were in force they made sense to those in favor of them).

Times and perspectives change and probably within 10 or so years a bunch of current same sex marriage opponents will be trying to pretend they weren't.

Well those in favor of the laws said the distinction didn't cause inequality as the same race restrictions applied equally across races. Blacks were free to marry anyone of the same race and Whites were free to marry anyone of the same race

So what? Those people were wrong. A lot of people say a lot of wrong things. Drawing any distinction based on race is a violation of the Constitution. It's really an easy, bright-line rule.

Rocket -- You are making this too hard. The Constitution mandates that people be treated equally concerning race.

Well, sure. But what's constitutionality got to do with gay marriage? I'm comparing the push for gay marriage with a-m laws. The comparison interests me, and MadisonMan brought up a-m laws in the context of this connversation.

Seven Machos said..."Madison -- It's a terrible public health hazard. You can't smoke in bars in Chicago but you can take a stranger home and fuck him or her in the ass? Without health insurance? That seems very wrong to me."

All that tells me is that we should be able to smoke in bars. I'm trying to quit, but it's just wrong not to allow me to smoke while enjoying a drink.

No. There is a strong rationale for married rates, and this speaks to Blue's question about what's valid about mot endorsing gay marriage. The rationale is multifaceted but it is all rooted in creating kids, which a monogamous gay couple is not able to do.

Will hospitals accept the other party to this private contract as the next of kin?

This is something that you, if you were smart, would simply try to change if it's a problem. A simple law about hospitals is easy to make.

Will courts accept the other party to this private contract as the spouse under intestate succession?

Is it me or is Jeremy arguing in good faith moreso than usual as the thread goes on? Congrats Jeremy. Your persuasion skills are more effective than when you insult. And I don't mean this comment as an insult.

Now, for the downsides - I'll be rehashing my earlier points.1) Dilution of the concept of marriage. This is downside as marriage loses it's traditional focus - broadening (or becoming more inclusive if you like) and thereby becoming less specific.2) Rolling out some of the more possible ills. Whats to stop marriage at gays? When you broach changing marriage for the feel good goal of including gays, what about minors, multiple wives/husbands, my couch?

Now that I think about it - if the only reason that you think gay marriage is OK is as a feel-good issue - then what are we arguing about? Feel-good issues aren't moral, and they certainly aren't constitutional.

Get the government out of marriage and I don't care who does it or what they call it.

Many who are so determined to have it open to all are also the ones who want the government to give out more benefits to the government-approved lifestyles.

Those who do not submit to the dyad bigotry are the ones being used and punished by marriage policy. I say keep your marriage and your civil union in the bedroom, all of you legalized fornicators and sodomites.

Jeremy, you can love and live with whoever you want and openly flaunt it without repercussions. But what you really want is to say that you and your partner are married and force everyone to tell you it's OK. Grow up. What bigots think of you will not change no matter what the law is.

Most Americans know that these sodomites who are now flaunt ling their sickness are an abomination and a cancer on our society. Their champions in the Democratic party do not care on iota about their well-being (if they did they would tell them to change their evil ways) instead they are using them to destroy our once great country.

In this way they lured the likes of Matthew Shepard and others to their deaths. I blame these Democrats who, in their overwhelming desire to destroy this country, told him to flaunt his sickness among pious Americans who do not accept such vileness. They are in some ways more to blame than Matthew Shepard or the actual killers.

There will be no peace until we stop trying to normalize the evil that is sodomy. You can take that to the bank.

Bag O' Wind - "Jeremy, you can love and live with whoever you want and openly flaunt it without repercussions. But what you really want is to say that you and your partner are married and force everyone to tell you it's OK."

Once again, you evidently miss the point.(what a shocker)

It's not repercussions gays are concerned with (and I have no idea what the "flaunt it" thing has to do with this...other than bigotry. Do straights "flaunt" their marriages or behavior?), it's the fact that they are entitled to the same rights as a heterosexual.

There are all kinds of things related to whether you're legally married or not; things that can effect everything from visitation to child rearing to money and ownership.

Things a heterosexual doesn't have to concern themselves with having the rights to because they're protected by laws.

Madison -- I think you know my libertarian proclivities well enough to know that I am at best half-serious. That said, why do you get to shill for changes in law while I cannot? Is it the professorship?

Triangle -- Really? That's the cant you brought here? Whence comes this right of individuals to have the state endorse their marriages, or to have any old thing stuck in any old orifice? Who is the lawgiver there? Further, are you really sure you don't want majorities to trample individual rights? Are you for the right not to serve gay people in restaurants, for example? Are you for Obamacare? Are you for easy gun ownership?

Jeremy is right here and, Tidy, you are wrong. There is nothing deviant about ass fucking. There are public health concerns galore when people stick penises in strange assholes without the benefit of any protection, but you have no moral case and you will not make much headway making one here, even among us conservatives.

I do not interact with those who wish evil to befall our once great nation. Less than fifty years ago you would have been hauled in front of a court charged with a felony for promoting your sodomite agenda. We were a more just and civil society then.

You and your sodomite agenda must be defeated if we are to ever get our former greatness as a moral nation back.

Forgive me if I am not persuaded by "majority rule". You can probably do better, but way to go all ad hominem questioning my smartypantsitude! I didn't think paraphrasing Ayn Rand would get you so worked up. I'm not promoting the government's involvement in marriage, that's just the way it is now. If you want to unravel that precedent, have at it. If, on the other hand, you and Mary Jane Rottencrotch can promise to be schmoopy best friends forever then I don't see why two chicks or two dudes can't do the same thing. If marriage is meaningless to the government, then there would be no legal reason, or means, to oppose the marriage of two same-sex adults. If marriage does have some meaning to our government (as is the case), then I think that status should be available to all adults.

Dude. They can. Get it through your thick skull. There is now in Wisconsin or anywhere that forbids a gay couple from having the same ceremony a straight couple has and living together the same way a straight couple does.

What part do you not understand? Why must I continue to explain this patently obvious fact every other post?

I support abortion because women are insane. You can't make the not abort,and they will endanger their lives in doing so. So in the interest of the public welfare, you make it legal, safe and morally repugnant. that last one can't be legislated.

You can't just take an interest in things that affect you. If that were true, I wouldn't support safe abortion.

You and others who support gay marriage do so out of a personal identification with it. You're therefore biased and not that objective.

If gay marriage had an value to society I'd be for it. However it's a feel-good make the gays fit issue. Nothing else.

Wills can be invalidated. If there is no valid will, the default is intestate succession. That means that one's hated parents or estranged brother might end up with all your property, and not your beloved widower.

"It comes down to this: the gov't regulates civil marriage, but it's not bound by any particular religious traditions or taboos. So should it discriminate against homosexuals simply because a certain religious segment of our population believes that marriage is a purely religious sacrament?"

The idea that opposition to gay marriage is limited to "a certain religious segment of our population" (I assume you mean some subset of Christians) or that it is based on the belief that "marriage is a purely religious sacrament" is silly. There is no evidence that any society anywhere in the world at any time in history ever allowed gays to participate in the institution of marriage. That changed around 1970 when gay marriage began to be recognized in a few places in Europe. It is too soon to know whether this social change will be permanent or successful.

The fact that gays existed in every society but were not allowed to marry is not evidence of discrimination against gays. It is evidence the the restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples may be a good idea, whether or not sociologists and historians can say why. It is also evidence that human nature may be such that gays may not be suited for marriage. Not conclusive evidence, but evidence all the same.

This is not to say that we should not consider extending marriage to gays. But it is to say that it should be done only after a long, careful public discussion has persuaded a solid majority that it is worth trying. It is also to say that recognizing gay marriage by judicial fiat is intolerable.

Jeremy -- If you look at his arguments as being faked arguments by a person who doesn't really believe them, he is brilliant. It's not easy to simultaneously argue a cause while at the same time discrediting that cause.

Do the people have the right to define civil marriage, including consanguinity, gender and number? I believe they do. In many cultures one is allowed to marry a first cousin or have multiple wives. In ours, we don't. [insert Appalachian joke here]

As far as same gender marriage goes, I have little doubt that it will be legal in 40-45 states in 50 years.

What I want to know is if I can be married to my best buddy, girl-chasing bachelor coworkers, such as we are. The tax benefits could be awesome. Would we have to fuck once to make it okay?

wv: raftecus: When Supreme Courts overturn the peoples' will or find new rights in penumbras it leads to a raftecus of shit.

Moose - "You and others who support gay marriage do so out of a personal identification with it. You're therefore biased and not that objective. If gay marriage had an value to society I'd be for it. However it's a feel-good make the gays fit issue. Nothing else."

I have no idea what this "personal identification" thing is you refer to, I support it because it's morally correct for all Americans to have the same rights.

As for gay marriage's "value to society," once again...I can't say how it adds or subtracts from society, other than being in line with the same rights heterosexuals enjoy.

But do you think a heterosexual marrying four or more times adds something?

Or how about that 50% divorce rate we have in America?

And as to your abortion comment; "I support abortion because women are insane."...well, I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say.

I am an American traditionalist who knows that this country was founded on Cristian beliefs. You must be quite young. Up until recently everything I have written was considered mainstream. This tells you how far off the tracks this country has gone.

See, this is the issue. I'm not a bigot. You identifying me as one puts you into the same classification as Tidy Brain.

Women are insane. If you look at their behavior regarding children and abortion, it is really quite clear. Women will die defending their children with their bare hands, and yet will stick bleach and coat hangers into their uterus's to abort a fetus. That dichotomy is NOT a feature of sanity.

But more to the point - how would gay marriage affect you personally? Other than make you feel good?

The Married vs. Single tax rate difference is not conditioned on having children or even on the possibility of children -- there is no IRS fertility test. It benefits couples with one wage-earner and one homemaker.

A simple law about hospitals is easy to make.

And can be difficult to enforce. Would you want to wait for a court order when a nurse is keeping you from visiting your beloved spouse is in an ICU, with her life ebbing away.

Contracts can be difficult to enforce. Did a contract help Ruth Tyrangiel? Further, if gays are forbidden real marriage, and formalized arrangements like civil unions, what makes you think the State of Wisconsin will enforce private contracts between same-sex couples? Won't they be construed as an end-run to achieve the impermissible?

Also, it is hard not to think that when Robert Bork was so viciously and wrongly denied a seat on the Supreme Court was when this country fully turned its head away from what is right. Now we are considering this week another sodomite for that very same court and there is not a ripple of outrage.

A sister-in-law was a nurse in the AIDs clinic at a big-city country hospital beginning in the early days of the health crisis. They were still trying to figure out what the vectors of the disease were.

A lot married hispanic men with children were getting HIV and insisting they were heterosexual. This skewed early statistics. A year or so later, literally, some one had the bright idea to ask "Have you ever had sex with a woman who turned out to be a man?"

Oh, Sí.

For real.

wv: afeliz: That funny feeling you get when your hand get between that hot gal's leg and ¡ay, caramba!

Moose - "But more to the point - how would gay marriage affect you personally? Other than make you feel good?"

Only in one respect: I believe in equal rights for all American citizens.

What is it about this that you can't get through your bigoted head?

As for you inane abortion comments...that "Women are insane."...well, once again, I have no idea what that even means...even with your ridiculous argument that they protect their own, yet still choose to have abortions.

Most here also believe in the Ten Commandments, but they all still lie and at times kill people.

So...is everybody therefore "insane?"

And why is it so hard for you to admit to being what you are? You throw out bigoted comments, yet act as if they carry no weight.

You are quite immature. I realize that you are probably from the generation that came after the abnormal was normalized. You can not appreciate because of your youth how the "American reality" has been turned on its head. Now sodomites (and I refuse to update my language just because it is now politically incorrect) are ruling us and are considered to be cool. When I served in Korea it would have gotten you punched in the nose or worse and a dishonorable discharge.

Yo Jeremy, what, with tax bennies, maybe better insurance rates, etc., why shouldn't my bud and me get hitched? What a line to use on the ladies! Right? And if either of us wanted to marry a woman, we've got no-fault divorce.

I suppose it's good to have a handy reference thread like this one, so I can remember which commenters are mentally-defective toads who apparently harbour genocidal fantasies about eradicating homosexuals like me from the face of the earth, all the while taking the most embarrassing pleasure in writing graphic descriptions of homosexual activities. Typical warped, fag-obsessed fascist thugs.

I suspect a portion of these commenters are also what's referred to as "Mobys", who're writing the most cartoonishly stupid things in order to discredit the decent commenters here.

Of course, the more of this sort of conversation that occurs, the fewer decent commenters will remain. There's already a shortage.

I suppose it's good to have a handy reference thread like this one, so I can remember which commenters are mentally-defective toads who apparently harbour genocidal fantasies about eradicating homosexuals like me from the face of the earth, all the while taking the most embarrassing pleasure in writing graphic descriptions of homosexual activities. Typical warped, fag-obsessed fascist thugs.

Jesus fucking Christ!

What a fucking drama queen you are, Palladian.

The "bigot" game is over as far as I'm concerned. You can't stick it up your ass.